Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday September 17, 2010 @03:56PM
from the until-jobs-smash dept.

itwbennett writes "Peter Smith is blogging about the free iSwifter app, which aims to solve the 'no Flash games on iPads' problem. The app, which is currently available for the iPad and planned for the iPhone and other devices, 'streams Flash games to your iPad. You run the app, which contacts iSwifter servers, which are actually running the Flash. Ideally, the effect is identical to running the app directly from a web page.' Smith tested the app and calls it an 'interesting idea,' but an imperfect solution — at least right now."

I haven't been paying close attention, so I could be a bit out of date here. As far as I'm aware though, mobile safari doesn't have JIT compilation for JS yet. Without that, anything intensive with javascript will run at a snail's pace.

farmville is already on the iphone/ipad and links to facebook. and there is enough porn out there that works on the iphone/ipad that lack of flash isn't that big a deal. worst case you can download your porn yourself using firefox on your PC, convert using handbrake and carry all your porn with you

My company's internal web sites use Flash all over the place. In our workflow system, our annual review system, etc. If the iPad is really going to go corporate in a big way, it will eventually need Flash for these kinds of uses. Internal corporate systems are not going to be rewritten in HTML5 anytime soon.

What a stupid statement. Medications effects and reactions have shown to differ between people; meetings have shown themselves to be universal in nature.

And it still doesn't answer the original question of why a meeting would NEED an animated graph. You are just arguing for the sake of being an asshole; I'll give you the last response since that is what an asshole naturally seeks.

Naw - he's just being all 1337 and using the ampersand instead of the word "at" (_much_ hipper!), and probably telling him to join those two IRC channels for assistance, though he forgot to note the server. Talk about IT fail(ure)!

If Flash matters to you, don't buy the iPad, and send Apple a respectful e-mail saying that you require Flash support in a tablet device if you are to buy it. That is the real solution. If sales suffer because of the lack of Flash, and they are aware of it, then it is likely they'll rectify the problem. If not, someone else will.

However if you get all caught up in Shiny New Toy Syndrome and rush out to buy it, no matter how bad a fit for your use it is, don't go and cry about it later. All that tells companies is that you don't really care about what you say you do, they can produce whatever they like with whatever restrictions they like and you'll buy it so long as it is cool.

I just don't understand all the crying about Flash on Apple devices. If it doesn't matter to you, then great, buy their device, be happy and so on. If it does matter, then do not buy their device, let them know that this is a requirement before you make a purchase, and go on with your life.

However don't buy the device because it is cool, without researching it, and then cry because it won't do what you want.

Actually either way is totally fine. There's nothing wrong with buying a tablet as a toy and being happy with the apps in the store. There's also nothing wrong with wanting it as a professional device, and demanding that it works with all your sites/software and refusing to buy it if it doesn't meet your needs. The problem is people who want to buy it because it is a shiny toy, and then cry because it isn't what they wanted. Don't buy it then.

I just don't understand all the crying about Flash on Apple devices. If it doesn't matter to you, then great, buy their device, be happy and so on. If it does matter, then do not buy their device, let them know that this is a requirement before you make a purchase, and go on with your life./quote.

And if Flash doesn't matter and you're not going to buy an Apple product anyway, bitch on Slashdot about it so we can circulate mod points!

If Flash matters to you, don't buy the iPad, and send Apple a respectful e-mail saying that you require Flash support in a tablet device if you are to buy it.

I hated Flash before it was seemingly cool to like it again.

So I'll advise anyone who has had a multi-year dislike of Flash, from the CPU-sucking browser crashing video playback, to the headache inducing animated ads, to the flash overlays that perch atop the real content - to those people, email other device makers and ask them why on earth they are

I'm ok with whatever people want. Devices, like computers and tablets, are just tools to be used to accomplish the job you want. What that job is will differ person to person. So if you have no use for Flash, then getting a device that doesn't support it makes sense. However some people do have a use for Flash. For them it does not make sense to get it, and then complain about it.

My objection is just to people who buy devices and then bitch that they aren't what they want. This seems to happen more often wi

The problem is, there is so much Flash content, especially in the area of entertainment, that throwing it away just like that means you throw away all that entertainment. Sure, it probably doesn't matter to everyone, but there are some online cartoons, animations and sometimes even games that require Flash that I'd love to be able to play on , which I may or may not own.

Of course, you could also limit it to just being a desktop application. But it's still inconvenient especially because some entire websites

I don't know anyone who has an iOS device that complains about lack of Flash. I know dozens upon dozens of people with iOS devices, some for years now.

It seems like most of the bitching about Flash comes from Flash developers who won't or can't port to Cocoa Touch or HTML 5. Which is fine by me, they are complaining about a vendor making a somewhat arbitrary technical decision that impacts their careers. I'd be pissed too if a large portion of my market was obviated practically overnight.

Exactly I have no desire for flash on my device, I have more friends than I can count that own iphones and not a single one has ever said a peep about flash missing from the device. In fact as a developer I am happy with Apple making it just as difficult as possible for flash to work on the device.

Or even better... if flash is so damn important, why doesn't Adobe, or someone, make a Flash machine? i.e., a computer or tablet, that ONLY does flash... no JavaScript, no H.264, no HTML, or Ajax, no C# or DoTNET, no ObjC, and no text... jut a flash interface, connects directly over the Internet to all the flash you can eat. Why not? I really wish someone would release some such thing... then Adobe could pull Apple or Microsoft's game and only let flash be accessed through said device... and then the rest o

Without those you have an incomplete implementation of Flash, because Flash uses those (well, technically a variation of ECMAScript, but it's very similar anyway).

As long as it's in the flash wrapper... don't care. Point is it's a thing that does nothing without the flash wrapper. Get it? Adobe would like nothing more than to wrap the whole of the internet in flash. So let them, in their own machine. Just keep it the hell away from my browser.

However if you get all caught up in Shiny New Toy Syndrome and rush out to buy it, no matter how bad a fit for your use it is, don't go and cry about it later. All that tells companies is that you don't really care about what you say you do, they can produce whatever they like with whatever restrictions they like and you'll buy it so long as it is cool.

I just don't understand all the crying about Flash on Apple devices. If it
doesn't matter to you, then great, buy their device, be happy and so on. If
it does matter, then do not buy their device, let them know that this is a
requirement before you make a purchase, and go on with your life.

I think it's a simple tit-for-tat response to all the conspicuous joy about those Apple devices. It's ok for Apple fanbois to buy iPads, but they don't need to relentlessly tell everyone about it. If it matters

I see thin clients becoming a common solution to many graphical/computational intensive applications in the future.

I see the future not coming any time soon, at least until mobile Internet access plans in the United States become much cheaper. At least thick clients can work in environments that connect to the Internet only intermittently.

And the day that an enlightened populace doesn't blame the vendor for the poor performance of their device when viewing sites crafted using a particular technology, they will.

Remember how everybody blamed MSFT when Windows 95 broke existing programs written by fans of Petzold's Undocumented Windows? Same problem, different words, except that Apple went the other way preemptively this time.

When the following generation looks at the folks that came before and sneers that they are old, outmoded and do not have the necessary mental capacity to understand the "new way" re-inventing the wheel is a sad but necessary part of the process.

Most of what is considered to be recent developments in computer science has foundations if not actual implementations in the years before 1970. It may be in a different context, but the same problems have been solved, and are being solved again.

I don't think it is a choice - it is absolutely necessary for people to re-invent the wheel every few years. It is either that or slide backwards as old methods that work are discarded. We are either going to replace them (usually with the same old methods, eventually) or give up and accept less.

Really, the existence of something like iSwifter is an interesting counterpoint to the article from yesterday about how terrorists are frequently engineers, or rather, it points out that the same isn't true in most cultures.

When someone is willing to gin up a jury-rigged way to play Flash games remotely on an iDevice rather than stick an IED in Steve Jobs' car to solve the same problem, I think that's a pretty good testament to how committed most technically-skilled people are to civilization, and that's a